Dean Mosiman called me about the budget story he wrote. It’s hard to react to something you haven’t seen, but one thing is clear. The Mayor totally misled me and several others when he said he would hold Community Services agencies harmless like the police department. Not true.

No cost of living increases for the Community Services and CDBG groups. I was mad enough when he told us that even though we requested 4%, he was giving us 3%. (And he didn’t even know that he didn’t give us what we had requested.) When I say “us”, I mean as part of the Early Childhood Education and Childcare Board. I seriously, don’t want to go to another heartbreaking meeting where we agonize over which after school program to cut.

This is absurd on so many levels. Nothing for kids to do after school will just mean we need more police services. Which means there will be less money for community services and then Capt. Lengfeld can complain that the community services agencies just can’t keep up. It makes sense, he’s right, if there are no cost of living increases and the city is growing, and health care and fuel costs and everything else goes up, how are agencies supposed to keep up. Duh.

This makes no sense. We better just add 100 more police officers and get them some human services training, because there won’t be community services to work with them to prevent troubles in the community. Or, we better just start accepting that lower quality of life that some neighborhoods are concerned about

I seriously, don’t want to go to another heartbreaking meeting where we agonize over which after school program to cut.

With the exception of this year, every Spring the Board of Education holds a series of heartbreaking meetings where they decide which school programs and after school programs to cut, which will do the least harm to the education of our children.

The November referendum will not put an end to these heartbreaking meetings (about $3 million will be cut over the next three years), but it will make the meetings less painful than they would be if about $16 million had to be cut over the same period (what no referendum means).